Marshall DSL401
Written: Jun 30 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Clean Channel Rocks
Low Price
Cons: Chrunch Channel Has now lows!
The Bottom Line: A Marshall at affordable price. You get what you pay for.
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| madarnell's Full Review: Marshall Jcm2000 Dsl Head |
Marshall JCM2000 DSL401Combo
Marshall Amplification began in 1962 in London England. That’s when the original production of those first JTM45 showed up and changed the sound of popular music forever. For over 35 years Marshall has been putting out great amplifier designs and tones! One of the latest to show up a few years ago is the JCM2000 DSL401Combo.
The JCM2000 DSL401 & DSL201 actually was the Winner of Guitar Player Magazine's Editors' Pick Award. I quote…
"Their(DSL401 and DSL201) tight, punchy tones are Marshall through and through, these new combos are the mightiest minis that Marshall has ever made.”
Art Thompson-Guitar Player Magazine-
THE SPEC’S
The DSL401 is a compact, EL84-powered 1x12" combo, although it may appear small don't let its small size fool you, this thing can pack a mighty powerful punch!
According to Marshall the most significant difference from the rest of the DSL range, is they claim DSL401 has three footswitchable sounds - Clean, OD1 & OD2! I’ll cover that in detail in a moment.
The DSL401 also has the following on the rear panel:
-Dual speaker jacks.
-An 8 Ohm/16 Ohm impedance selector switch for driving external cabinets.
-Speaker emulated DI output. (Tried it, sorry it still sounds like a mosquito!)
-Optional Reverb on/off footswitch jack.
-FX Loop with front panel mix control.
-Also a footswitch channel selector jack.
The output section is powered by 4x EL84 output tubes and the pre-amp has 4x ECC83 Preamp tubes. This combination delivers a very loud 40-watt’s of power into a special designed Celestion 12-inch speaker. I swear it actually sounds more like 50 watts!
3 Switching Channels?
The clean channel (channel #1) has a full punchy sound. Very versatile depending on where you set the pre-gain control. It consists of Pre-gain, Bass, Mid & Treble controls. These are very expressive and can yield a sparkling clean rhythm sound to a bluesy Eric Clapton meets Stevie Ray Vaughan vibe.
Overdrive #2 Channel is somewhat different. It has a pre and a master. So the amount of distortion not only can bet set but the overall volume too. This is good. This master then feeds into the main master at the far right of the panel, which controls the overall output of the whole amp. The eq is the same Bass, Mid, and treble. Here is the real difference, the sound of the EQ and this channel (OD1) is totally different than the first channel. In fact it’s so different I have a hard time getting tones to correlate from channel #1 to channel 2. For example if you set the eq on channel #1 (clean channel) all straight up , this yields a nice full punchy clean sound with say a Fender American Strat. If you set the second channel (OD1) the same way and balance the volumes, the tone, on channel #2 is very thin. No bottom end at all. It’s like they rolled out 200-450 Hz by 20db. This I don’t like at all! For me to get channel #2 or (OD1) to sound compatible with the clean channel I have to roll out a little more lows/Bass than I like on channel #1 and then boost ALL of the lows/Bass on channel #2 or (OD1) and roll 65% of the mids out and about 75% of the highs out!
*Note I’m not talking about distortion here, this amp does that fine. Plenty of gain for those who like to shred!
So to me channel #2 or OD1 just takes a lot of fussing to get a compatible sounding rhythm crunch thang happening together with channel #1.
So………. from there you click to what Marshall calls the 3rd channel or OD2. It really only act’s as a 20 db of gain boost and a little more of actual volume boost. I really doubt its 20db of actual volume boost. At least it doesn’t sound like it to me. When I solo I don’t need 20db more of distortion. I just need a little more gain (distortion) and more volume to cut above the band. The thing I don’t like here it (OD2) or Channel #3 shares the same pre & eq settings as channel#2 or (OD1). So if you’ve dialed in channel two, to sound like a great punchy, chunky AC/DC type rhythm sound and click to the Channel #3 sound, it just sounds like mushy distorted freaked out garbage! That's not how I want my lead channel to sound. You can dial the lead channel to sound killer, but then when you switch back to channel #2 (OD1) it sounds bad. Ugh!
So I’ve concluded this amp does really only 2 things well. It does the clean/slightly bluesy distorted thing on channel 1 very well. You then need to decide either channel 2 is going to be a dedicated crunchy rhythm channel or a dedicated tweaked in Solo channel! For me getting it to do Clean Rhythm, Crunchy Rhythm, and Juicy Soloing lead doesn’t work very well!
BUT
I have noticed if you unplug the internal 12 inch speaker and add either a 2-12 cabinet, 4-10 cabinet or a classic 4-12 cabinet. This amp takes on new life. Obviously a 4-12 cabinet is going to sound much fuller and will yield a lot more low end/Bass. So then to get a nice clean glassy sound out of channel 1 you have to roll more bass & low end out and boost a little more of the highs. This also helps channel #2 or (OD1) to sound more fuller and I don’t have to boost all of the low’s to match channel one closer now. At this point channel#3 (od2) becomes more useable now. Plus with the extra impedance load from the 4-12 cabinet will allow you to crank the out-put up more and get some nice out-put tube distortion without using a lot of pre-amp distortion. And with out ripping your face off with volume.This sounds more like Classic Hendrix now!
In closing
You might ask me for whom this amp and what conditions would be most suited for? I would say a gigging pro who needs something portable with a great sounding clean channel, that’s sounds like a Marshall, and you use other pedals for leads and effects & stuff???…. This amp works great and would suit that situation well.
Also this would make a great recording studio amp! Because then you can tweak in many different sounds and track them accordingly one at a time.
A “do all amp”? No, sorry in my opinion it just doesn’t cut it! But then again I’m not sure if there is a thing such as that. Have you seen Aerosmith, the Who and Eric Clapton on tour lately? They still have a “back-line” of many classic amps to click between to get their favorite tones.
So there you have it, are you totally confused yet?
Thanks for reading
Mark D.
Recommended:
No
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